02 January 2006

Be Vewy Vewy Quiet: I'm Optimizing My Bwain Pewfowmance

My dangerous idea is that what's needed to attain optimal brain performance — with or without prior brain exercise — is a 24-hour period of absolute solitude. By absolute solitude I mean no verbal interactions of any kind (written or spoken, live or recorded) with another human being. I would venture that a significantly higher proportion of people reading these words have tried skydiving than experienced one day of absolute solitude.

I'm skeptical that it would lead to "optimal brain performance" -- how do you measure that in the first place? -- but I'm comfortable that it would lead to an improvement in the quality of life. (Okay, okay. That's hard to measure, too.)